Sunday 11am ET Update: In response to a query from Ars, the AMC-9 satellite's operator, Luxembourg-based SES, issued the following statement on Sunday morning:

In the early hours of 1st July, the SES Satellite Control reestablished contact to AMC-9. SES and the satellite manufacturer Thales are working around the clock to evaluate the status and define the next steps.

Tracking information received on 29 June had suggested that at least two separate objects were located in the vicinity of AMC-9. Their source has still to be determined. The new piece of information was included by Thales and SES in their investigations.

All relevant operators and agencies are being kept informed and will receive regular updates from SES. The current assessment is that there is no risk of a collision with other active satellites. AMC-9 and its status continue to being tracked by SES and agencies, including the Joint Space Operations Centre (JSpOC) and ExoAnalytic, a private firm and tracking service provider.

Since the incident on 17 June 2017, AMC-9 has been slowly moving westwards with its payload disabled and not causing interference. A majority of traffic has been transferred to other SES satellites and SES is working on a long-term plan to minimize disruption to customers.

Original post: On the morning of June 17, the Luxembourg-based satellite operator SES lost control of a large satellite in geostationary space, nearly 36,000km above the Earth's surface. Shortly after, the satellite operator began working with another company that specializes in space situational awareness to track the drifting machine, AMC-9. A few days ago that company, ExoAnalytic Solutions, saw the AMC-9 satellite begin to fragment.

"We have seen several pieces come off of it over the past several days," ExoAnalytic's chief executive officer, Doug Hendrix, told Ars. "We are tracking at least one of the pieces. I would hesitate to say we know for sure what happened."

Further Reading

The AMC-9 communications satellite launched in 2003 aboard a Russian Proton rocket. It is a fairly large satellite and was nearing the end of its 15-year design lifetime. Like about 500 other governmental and commercial geostationary satellites, AMC-9 orbited Earth at about 36,000km. This is because, when flying above the equator at precisely this altitude, satellites can easily maintain their position over a fixed point. This facilitates constant communication between Earth and the ground. This high orbit above Earth's equator is therefore valuable and increasingly cluttered real estate.

Unfortunately, there is no atmospheric drag that high above Earth, so once debris gets into geostationary orbit it tends to remain there. With a global network of 165 optical telescopes around the globe, ExoAnalytic focuses on tracking objects in and near geostationary orbit. Its private services augment the "space situational awareness" program led by the US Air Force.

A chain reaction?

At present, Hendrix said the company is tracking about 2,000 objects in geostationary orbit, some as small as about 20cm. Of these, about one-quarter are satellites—a mix of military, weather, and communications assets—and the rest debris. An uncontrolled debris event at geostationary orbit is exceedingly rare, and the concern with such events is that they could potentially lead to a cascading debris event known as the Kessler syndrome. "This is a seminal event for understanding what happens when there are many fragments at that altitude," Hendrix said.

An expert in space situational awareness, Brian Weeden of the Secure World Foundation, downplayed this possibility with the AMC-9 satellite. "The challenge is that those pieces, in human terms, will be up there almost forever, and will present a long-term navigational hazard," Weeden said. "This will definitely increase the odds of collisions over the Americas, but I don't think this is going to set off a chain reaction."

Rough cut video of AMC-9 satellite on Friday night.

It is not clear what might have caused the AMC-9 satellite to become unresponsive, begin drifting, and apparently begin to break apart. A spokesman for the satellite operator SES, Markus Payer, did not return a request for comment on Saturday evening from Ars.

Weeden mentioned several possibilities. The AMC-9 satellite itself could have been hit by some sort of debris, or it could have have been harmed by a space weather problem, sustained a failure due to manufacturing. The AMC-9 could have been attacked by something—however, Weeden stressed that there is no evidence at all that this damage was deliberate. In any case, this situation seems sure to heighten concerns over space debris and the safety of assets at geostationary orbit, which in aggregate are valued at more than $100 billion.

172 Reader Comments

If it's coming apart, my guess would be a micrometeorite impact. Something to small for us to have seen coming in hitting it, and causing a structural failure.

The pieces would stay mostly together to start (since they have nearly the same initial velocity), and could easily cause more failures as they hit each other, especially if the main bus was damaged but not completely broken in the initial impact.

As the launch costs come down with the efforts from SpaceX and the like, we may soon come to a time where it's actually feasible to pay for a "clean-up" operation. The number of debris will only increase, and the aggregate value of assets in a given orbit will keep rising. Maybe it's time for me to watch Planetes again...

Great... Can we please get a U.N based authority to manage this mess? It's ridiculous one satellite can create such a dangerous mess for the rest of them with no contingency plan in place. How are these governments/corporations not required to prove their ability to mitigate a disaster before each launch? Who's going to foot the bill to clean this crap up once it gets out of hand?

Space is the property of man kind and no single nation, so how is it that the U.N. doesn't actively police this crap?

It's worse than that. China and the U.S. have both successfully destroyed satellites from the ground. In China's case the effects were much worse and long term.

Great... Can we please get a U.N based authority to manage this mess? It's ridiculous one satellite can create such a dangerous mess for the rest of them with no contingency plan in place. How are these governments/corporations not required to prove their ability to mitigate a disaster before each launch? Who's going to foot the bill to clean this crap up once it gets out of hand?

Space is the property of man kind and no single nation, so how is it that the U.N. doesn't actively police this crap?

It's worse than that. China and the U.S. have both successfully destroyed satellites from the ground. In China's case the affects were much worse and long term.

Great... Can we please get a U.N based authority to manage this mess? It's ridiculous one satellite can create such a dangerous mess for the rest of them with no contingency plan in place. How are these governments/corporations not required to prove their ability to mitigate a disaster before each launch? Who's going to foot the bill to clean this crap up once it gets out of hand?

Space is the property of man kind and no single nation, so how is it that the U.N. doesn't actively police this crap?

The satellite was up there for 14 years. It was fine for all those years so noone would anticipate the break up.

It's inevitable part of our progress. So far the issue is not critical but we are getting there.

With cheap flights will come up situation where actively we need to clean up the orbit. We are not yet there though as this disassembly proves how unique situation it actually is

Great... Can we please get a U.N based authority to manage this mess? It's ridiculous one satellite can create such a dangerous mess for the rest of them with no contingency plan in place. How are these governments/corporations not required to prove their ability to mitigate a disaster before each launch? Who's going to foot the bill to clean this crap up once it gets out of hand?

Space is the property of man kind and no single nation, so how is it that the U.N. doesn't actively police this crap?

One satellite in relatively few pieces at GEO is not a disaster, not even close. GEO is big. I mean, really big. Like, 2 x 3.14 x 42,000km big. Also, everything up there is in exactly the same orbital plane, so closing speeds are low, unlike LEO where it's common to have orbits crossing at any angle. Finally, even though there's no aerodynamic drag to deorbit debris, at the same time GEO is not very stable due to lunar and solar tidal forces, which will tend to gradually pull everything out of that orbit.

While I was watching the video, I thought: "those are pretty long exposures with a good telescope, I wonder if any deep space objects (galaxies, nebulae, etc) will go by" and sure enough, there's a big ol' globular cluster at :30.

If it's coming apart, my guess would be a micrometeorite impact. Something to small for us to have seen coming in hitting it, and causing a structural failure.

The pieces would stay mostly together to start (since they have nearly the same initial velocity), and could easily cause more failures as they hit each other, especially if the main bus was damaged but not completely broken in the initial impact.

It would have to be one hell of a manufacturing defect for a satellite to just come apart fast enough to alter its orbit while it's sitting in GEO. This is a Spacebus 3000 and is rated for 5-15 kW of power; I guess a battery could have blown up.

Great... Can we please get a U.N based authority to manage this mess? It's ridiculous one satellite can create such a dangerous mess for the rest of them with no contingency plan in place. How are these governments/corporations not required to prove their ability to mitigate a disaster before each launch? Who's going to foot the bill to clean this crap up once it gets out of hand?

Space is the property of man kind and no single nation, so how is it that the U.N. doesn't actively police this crap?

The satellite was up there for 14 years. It was fine for all those years so noone would anticipate the break up.

It's inevitable part of our progress. So far the issue is not critical but we are getting there.

With cheap flights will come up situation where actively we need to clean up the orbit. We are not yet there though as this disassembly proves how unique situation it actually is

Isn't it normal to be more pessimistic about something's anticipated lifespan as it gets older, rather than going with "but it's been alive for years, how could it be dead now?"

While I was watching the video, I thought: "those are pretty long exposures with a good telescope, I wonder if any deep space objects (galaxies, nebulae, etc) will go by" and sure enough, there's a big ol' globular cluster at :30.

It seems that with the multiple but well aligned exposures, made possible by the relatively stable orbit ( at least until it started tumbling ) that it should be possible to create a super-resolution image it the satellite and see more detail than shown here. It would be interesting to see what it really looked like, just before something happened, but I suppose that's only for ExoAnalytic's paying customers. ( The say they can track 20 cm objects. )

While I was watching the video, I thought: "those are pretty long exposures with a good telescope, I wonder if any deep space objects (galaxies, nebulae, etc) will go by" and sure enough, there's a big ol' globular cluster at :30.

It seems that with the multiple but well aligned exposures, made possible by the relatively stable orbit ( at least until it started tumbling ) that it should be possible to create a super-resolution image it the satellite and see more detail than shown here. It would be interesting to see what it really looked like, just before something happened, but I suppose that's only for paying customers. ( After all the say they can track centimeter sizes objects. )

My guess is that they couldn't. The ISS, which is enormous and a couple hundred km away, is only a couple of pixels, even on a very good amateur setup. I'm _guessing_ that these guys are using what would be very-high-end amateur stuff (16in). GEO sats are 100x further than the ISS and much, much smaller.

That they can track 20cm objects just means that they can collect enough light to get a 20cm object, it doesn't necessarily mean that they can resolve detail at a 20cm resolution.

All of the above is just my gut feeling though. I'm a bit too sleepy to do the math on whether it's possible to get detail on a satellite from the earth. A very quick calculation would say: "if a LEO spysat can achieve 1cm detail, then a similarly-sized telescope on the ground looking the other way at a GEO satellite might be able to achieve 1m detail". But these guys probably don't have a network of KH-11-sized mirrors on the ground.

Great... Can we please get a U.N based authority to manage this mess? It's ridiculous one satellite can create such a dangerous mess for the rest of them with no contingency plan in place. How are these governments/corporations not required to prove their ability to mitigate a disaster before each launch? Who's going to foot the bill to clean this crap up once it gets out of hand?

Space is the property of man kind and no single nation, so how is it that the U.N. doesn't actively police this crap?

The satellite was up there for 14 years. It was fine for all those years so noone would anticipate the break up.

It's inevitable part of our progress. So far the issue is not critical but we are getting there.

With cheap flights will come up situation where actively we need to clean up the orbit. We are not yet there though as this disassembly proves how unique situation it actually is

I'd not be leaping toward the "cheap flights making the problem worse" conclusion quite yet.

First of all, they're only "cheaper", but not "cheap".Secondly, placing a satellite at THAT orbit ain't that cheap, mostly because due to the limited real estate up there, no one can clog it up with junk. So those satellites will be expensive, which means they'll be fairly rare launches, still. More of them, certainly, but hardly so many that it will end in chaos.

The fact is, we need to clean up pretty much all orbits, especially the ones where the cheap flights WILL clutter things up. I expect keeping the geostationary orbits organized will be done before clutter becomes a crisis.

After all, it's not like no one knows about the problem or is unwilling to cooperate, since it's in everyone's best interests to make sure it doesn't become more of a problem than it already is.

The morning of it going off course I got a call from a company that feeds us programming over that bird giving us temporary coordinates to move the feed elsewhere for the weekend. Come monday it and another feed were permanently moved to SES-1 a much newer bird. It was still transmitting feeds that Saturday morning but drifting and not responding, so whatever happened didn't destroy its ability to re-transmit signals immediately, just killed off its ability to be controlled or provide any telemetry. The likely possibilities are failed battery exploded due to age or a short, a fuel tank ruptured for some reason or it was hit by debris leading to the failure.

It was a 24 channel KU and 24 channel C band bird that weighed 4100 kilos. So for a geo bird it was a mid sized sat, since it was all chemical propulsion these days an all electric bird in the 2000-2500 kilo range could easily replace it.

Armchair scientist here. I would guess that the variable brightness (pulsating) indicates that the satellite is spinning on some axis. The fact that is seemed to be moving in a different speed related to the other glowing orbs which I resume to be other satellites seems to indicate that it is on a faster (decaying?) orbit.

Armchair scientist here. I would guess that the variable brightness (pulsating) indicates that the satellite is spinning on some axis. The fact that is seemed to be moving in a different speed related to the other glowing orbs which I resume to be other satellites seems to indicate that it is on a faster (decaying?) orbit.

Rhythmic brightening and dimming indicates the satellite is spinning. If attitude control merely failed it would spin very slowly. Something either hit it, or something on the satellite exploded (batteries or a pressure vessel probably). Remote chance that an attitude thruster got stuck and caused the satellite to spin faster and faster until g forces became so great that the pieces started flying off. Doesn't look like it is spinning that quickly though.

As the launch costs come down with the efforts from SpaceX and the like, we may soon come to a time where it's actually feasible to pay for a "clean-up" operation. The number of debris will only increase, and the aggregate value of assets in a given orbit will keep rising. Maybe it's time for me to watch Planetes again...

As the launch costs come down with the efforts from SpaceX and the like, we may soon come to a time where it's actually feasible to pay for a "clean-up" operation. The number of debris will only increase, and the aggregate value of assets in a given orbit will keep rising. Maybe it's time for me to watch Planetes again...

The morning of it going off course I got a call from a company that feeds us programming over that bird giving us temporary coordinates to move the feed elsewhere for the weekend. Come monday it and another feed were permanently moved to SES-1 a much newer bird. It was still transmitting feeds that Saturday morning but drifting and not responding, so whatever happened didn't destroy its ability to re-transmit signals immediately, just killed off its ability to be controlled or provide any telemetry. The likely possibilities are failed battery exploded due to age or a short, a fuel tank ruptured for some reason or it was hit by debris leading to the failure.

It was a 24 channel KU and 24 channel C band bird that weighed 4100 kilos. So for a geo bird it was a mid sized sat, since it was all chemical propulsion these days an all electric bird in the 2000-2500 kilo range could easily replace it.

It was a 24 channel KU and 24 channel C band bird that weighed 4100 kilos. So for a geo bird it was a mid sized sat, since it was all chemical propulsion these days an all electric bird in the 2000-2500 kilo range could easily replace it.

For more info on electric satellites, see here[1], here [2], here [3], and here [4].

The morning of it going off course I got a call from a company that feeds us programming over that bird giving us temporary coordinates to move the feed elsewhere for the weekend. Come monday it and another feed were permanently moved to SES-1 a much newer bird. It was still transmitting feeds that Saturday morning but drifting and not responding, so whatever happened didn't destroy its ability to re-transmit signals immediately, just killed off its ability to be controlled or provide any telemetry. The likely possibilities are failed battery exploded due to age or a short, a fuel tank ruptured for some reason or it was hit by debris leading to the failure.

It was a 24 channel KU and 24 channel C band bird that weighed 4100 kilos. So for a geo bird it was a mid sized sat, since it was all chemical propulsion these days an all electric bird in the 2000-2500 kilo range could easily replace it.

Ehm... hit by debris? Isnt all space crap tracked at all times? Don't want to be a male organ between legs but shouldn't anything that might endanger something like that be tracked? Also ignorant idiot here....

There are a number of things that are too small to be tracked that can still do considerable damage in addition to micrometeorites so while the risk is low it's still a possibility.

This satellite was in geostationary orbit. On the annotated pictures, several other satellites are indicates as being in geostationary orbit - but in the video, those satellites move relative to the satellite in question - they come into frame, pass by the satellite, then pass out of frame.

If they were all in geostationary orbit, this wouldn't be possible. So what's really going on with those other satellites?

The morning of it going off course I got a call from a company that feeds us programming over that bird giving us temporary coordinates to move the feed elsewhere for the weekend. Come monday it and another feed were permanently moved to SES-1 a much newer bird. It was still transmitting feeds that Saturday morning but drifting and not responding, so whatever happened didn't destroy its ability to re-transmit signals immediately, just killed off its ability to be controlled or provide any telemetry. The likely possibilities are failed battery exploded due to age or a short, a fuel tank ruptured for some reason or it was hit by debris leading to the failure.

It was a 24 channel KU and 24 channel C band bird that weighed 4100 kilos. So for a geo bird it was a mid sized sat, since it was all chemical propulsion these days an all electric bird in the 2000-2500 kilo range could easily replace it.

Wasnt Hearst TV on amc 9? I think them and NBC both had a piece of it

NBC and Cox used it for feeds as well as some smaller uplink providers. Also hosted a number of Latin America tv providers fta channels and some hughesnet transponders too. It was a very full bird.

This satellite was in geostationary orbit. On the annotated pictures, several other satellites are indicates as being in geostationary orbit - but in the video, those satellites move relative to the satellite in question - they come into frame, pass by the satellite, then pass out of frame.

If they were all in geostationary orbit, this wouldn't be possible. So what's really going on with those other satellites?

First it's drifting so it's possible to pass other orbital slots as it does so and second some of those other sats seen might be in lower orbits. Most likely it's the first possibility.